Statement lines that look the same but are not
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 7:59 pm
Open time and close time on a statement look like plain facts. They are not always the same kind of fact. Depending on the platform, open time may be the moment the order was sent, the moment the broker accepted it, or the moment the fill was recorded. On market execution accounts those can differ by a fraction of a second, which is irrelevant for a swing trade and very relevant when a scalp lasts 12 seconds.
Close time has the same issue. A trade closed by stop loss, take profit or by hand is stamped when the platform recorded the close, and sometimes that lags the real price touch.
Commission lines have their own version of this. A commission quoted per lot, per side or per round turn can look identical in a contract specification and mean a different cost per trade. Some statements show the full round-turn amount on the opening deal only. Others split it across open and close. When a trade is partially closed, commission may appear in several rows, and a quick scan can make that look like double charging when it is not, or hide a line that is genuinely missing.
The same confusion applies to swap. A trade held through the daily rollover collects a swap line, and on the usual triple-swap day a larger one appears to cover the weekend. Someone closing trades inside a minute should never see swap, so a swap line on a scalping statement means something was left open.
There is also the gap between gross and net. A total labelled profit may or may not include commission, and adding it twice, or never, is a common error when reconciling.
A decent check is to pick one trade and rebuild its result by hand from open price, close price, lot size and commission rate, then compare it to the statement. If those match to the cent, the rest of the statement can be trusted far more. If they do not, the cause is nearly always a timestamp or a commission convention, not the maths.
Which statement quirk, timestamps, split commissions or rounding, took longest to figure out on a particular platform?
Close time has the same issue. A trade closed by stop loss, take profit or by hand is stamped when the platform recorded the close, and sometimes that lags the real price touch.
Commission lines have their own version of this. A commission quoted per lot, per side or per round turn can look identical in a contract specification and mean a different cost per trade. Some statements show the full round-turn amount on the opening deal only. Others split it across open and close. When a trade is partially closed, commission may appear in several rows, and a quick scan can make that look like double charging when it is not, or hide a line that is genuinely missing.
The same confusion applies to swap. A trade held through the daily rollover collects a swap line, and on the usual triple-swap day a larger one appears to cover the weekend. Someone closing trades inside a minute should never see swap, so a swap line on a scalping statement means something was left open.
There is also the gap between gross and net. A total labelled profit may or may not include commission, and adding it twice, or never, is a common error when reconciling.
A decent check is to pick one trade and rebuild its result by hand from open price, close price, lot size and commission rate, then compare it to the statement. If those match to the cent, the rest of the statement can be trusted far more. If they do not, the cause is nearly always a timestamp or a commission convention, not the maths.
Which statement quirk, timestamps, split commissions or rounding, took longest to figure out on a particular platform?